Sainya (Part 1)
The Power of Elegant Defiance
This is the first part of my exploration into Sainya, the word that embodies the power of elegant defiance.
The Word I Had to Invent
Sainya (sigh-nya). A term I coined, loosely derived from a Hokkien curse word—murmured when reality refuses to match your virtue. Not crass. Not angry. Not crude. Just a melodic sigh of surrender. A knowing exhale, an intentional retreat. The Oxford Dictionary hasn’t caught up yet—but it will.
It’s not the same as screaming “f*ck this” into the void. Sainya is gentler. More elegant. The kind of word a mother might say to her daughter over tea, or a professor might mutter while scanning headlines. It rolls off the tongue like silk, but it’s laced with defiance—against the world, yes, but mostly against the pressure to endure, to over-function, to comply. It’s a quiet rebellion.
When the World Went Red
I invented Sainya in a moment of silent rage and ridiculousness. During the pandemic, I was safe in my San Francisco home, sipping butterfly pea flower juice from Thailand, surrounded by routine and comfort. But outside, the world was crumbling. People were dying. Hospitals were flooded. Survivors returned fractured. Meanwhile, California burned—whole towns were reduced to ash overnight.
One morning, I woke up to a blood-red sky. It felt like the apocalypse, or like we’d been transported to Mars. I looked outside, then turned inward. My carefully curated life of zero-waste routines, plastic-free shopping, and donation receipts stacked like holy offerings suddenly felt superfluous. I had done everything “right,” and still, the world went sideways. And in that moment, I realized I had to stop trying to fix the world and start embracing it.
The Crack
I was in my mid-30s, mid-burnout, and realized I’d been in “good” mode my whole damn life. Raised in a conservative Chinese-Filipino household, I was trained to be obedient: the good daughter, good student, good leader, good woman, good citizen. I juggled architecture, sustainability, and charity like spinning plates, thinking that virtue would protect me.
Then one day, I cracked. I whispered: Sainya. And for the first time in years, I felt free.
Why Sainya?
When I look at the people who’ve truly moved the world, it’s never the rule-followers. Mark Zuckerberg started Facemash to rate hot girls, which eventually evolved into the billion-dollar Facebook. Donald Trump, with all his ego and absurd “You’re FIRED!”, somehow became President. His wife Melania married into power and walked the halls of the White House in couture. Elon Musk founded SpaceX and Tesla because he believed in aliens and things most people found delusional. Then there’s Jeff Bezos, who sold books online and built a marketplace that redefined commerce.
But my personal favorite? Miley Cyrus. She co-wrote Flowers to cry through a heartbreak and ended up winning her first Grammy. Now that’s living boldly, unapologetically, and authentically.
The world doesn’t reward the good. It bends for the bold, the curious, the unhinged. Not the reckless, but the radically aligned.
So why was I still micromanaging my happiness like it was a retirement plan?